Adam Johnson replies in FAIR >> The Post sets up a false dichotomy that marks much revisionism of the era: MLK, to the Post, represented the “good” left, unmoved by racial nationalism and Marxist ideology. The lines, of course, were never that clear and simple. King considered himself a democratic socialist, “Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children,” King said to the Negro American Labor Council in 1961.
He made a habit of not punching left, even though constantly prompted to do so. While he had different approaches and tactics, King often spoke fondly of black nationalists such as Malcolm X and didn’t say a bad word about the decidedly Marxist and Maoist Black Panthers, who were emerging as a national force at the time of King’s assassination in the spring of 1968. King did not “work to turn back” these forces as much as he simply sought a different approach, often in tandem.
“Negroes are not the only poor in the nation. There are nearly twice as many white poor as Negro, and therefore the struggle against poverty is not involved solely with color or racial discrimination but with elementary economic justice.” These statements are uniformly not conservative. They are expressly leftist and/or progressive in nature, depending on how one defines such concepts. >>
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 | fair.org Because words and history evidently have no meaning, the Washington Post decided to honor Martin Luther King as a “true conservative.” | |
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